Set up and Management of Multilingual Websites in Sitecore

September 03, 2012

Globalization Partners International (GPI) provides
comprehensive document, software and website translation
services to help companies communicate and conduct business in any
language and in any locale.

GPI the translation agency
has extensive experience interfacing with a variety of WCMS
products in order to help clients author and publish multilingual
content destined for an array of target formats.

The Sitecore WCMS platform is built on top of the Microsoft .NET
stack of technologies, highly scalable and very easy to use. This
blog focuses on some key considerations which should be addressed
when preparing your Sitecore-powered website to
store, author and publish multilingual
content.

The Story

Throughout this blog post, we shall refer the following
hypothetical scenario which outlines basic requirements for the
development of a multi-language website in Sitecore.

Consider an international company which has offices in the
United States (English), Argentina (Spanish) and Japan (Japanese).
The company's website is available in the three (3) languages and
website visitors may switch between each language at any time while
on the website.

Let's assume the non-English versions of the website, should
directly target their respective local markets and do not provide
global company information. As such there is content in the English
version which is not present in the other two versions.

Designing your Information Architecture

For the
purposes of this blog post, the term "Information
Architecture" refers to the structural design of your content
tree within Sitecore. The Sitecore content tree provides a
hierarchical view of all your data management within the system.
Each element within the content tree is referred to as a
"content item", which can have multiple version numbers
and languages.

Typically the design of the content tree is done in the very
early stages of the website development project. If a proper
assessment of the website needs and goals are not conducted, the
information architecture design can go through several iterations
before it may be deemed as acceptable. The chosen design determines
how developers utilize the content to present, determines how
content can be presented in various ways, how content will be
stored/retrieved/rendered and most importantly impacts on the
website ability to scale well in the future to meet changing needs
and demands. An information architecture which is not well designed
around the full needs of a website can severely impact the
cost-effective and time-efficient completion of a project.

While Sitecore supports multiple languages out of the box,
considerations for delivering your website in multiple languages
should be determined very early within the design phase of the
project as well. Depending on the needs, objectives and
constraints, the approach taken for multi-lingual support can vary
vastly. Let's consider the following scenario as an example for
implementing a multi-language website using Sitecore:

Multisite Approach (i.e. One Language website per domain)

Sitecore provides a feature known as "Multisite". This allows
the administration and sharing of data between multiple distinct
websites from a single Sitecore implementation.

In the "web.config" configuration file, Sitecore website
administrators can enable different web sites for different domains
in the same Sitecore structure. The sites configuration section
contains a listing of website configurations Sitecore uses to host
each website.

For the purposes of the multi-lingual website and the
requirements stated above, the following shows an example of the
"sites configuration" snippet of configuration for the English
("website_en") version of the website:

Providing a Fallback Language

A "Fallback Language" is the chosen language and/or locale in
which content is displayed if it is not available in the language
selected by the user.

With reference to the requirements for the multi-lingual website
above, if users were viewing the global information section of the
English website and then switched to the Japanese equivalent there
would be no content associated with it. The "Fallback Language"
would then use the English content to render the pages since there
is no content in Japanese or Spanish.

The Fallback language acts as a catch-all approach for any
language missing in a particular version. However there may be
constraints at the business level which mandates English content
should be not available on the Japanese website while it is
accepted to show English content on the Spanish website if content
is missing. Ensuring that your website is culturally sensitive to
the target market, and users are not confused with mixed-languages,
is crucial website localization best practice and affects your
approach in designing your multilingual websites.

The catch-all Fallback Language while a convenient short-term
fix, should not be part of a long-term multilingual web content
strategy.

Further Information on Localization Resources

Globalization Partners International (GPI) frequently assists
customers with multilingual website design, development and
deployment, and has developed a suite of globalization tools to
help you achieve your multilingual website localization project
goals. You can explore them under the
Translation tools and Portals section of our website.

For more information or help with you next website translation
project, please do not hesitate to contact us via e-mail at info@globalizationpartners.com,
or by phone at (866) 272-5874, or by requesting a free translation
quote on your next website translation project.

Comments

On Sep 04, Brian Pedersen said:This is not exactly a Sitecore multilanguage solution, it's more of a multi-site solution. You have 3 different sites that does not share any data (apart from the "common" folder).

In fact, you don't even need to switch languages for each website. You could simply write the Japanese and Spanish text in the english language and set languageEmbedding="never" in the LinkProvider.

But your solution is perfect when the 3 websites differ in their structure, and the sites does not share any pages within each other. For true Sitecore-like multilanguage websites (where 1 website is available in multiple languages) read this article:

This post focuses on the specific scenario where companies using Sitecore CMS, engage their clients in different languages/cultures and also have requirements (legal, business, etc) in which their language specific websites are served on separate domains.

In the hypothetical 'story' we highlighted, the English, Spanish and Japanese websites may:

1. Share common content (e.g. products, services)

2. Provide their own specific structure, navigation and content on an as needed basis (as per legal/business/market requirements).

The multi-site implementation is a wonderful example of the power and flexibility the Sitecore CMS offers companies who have complex business requirements.

We envision a possible follow-up post which explores the approach and considerations of using a single Sitecore site with multiple languages.

On Oct 08, How To Make A Website Multilingual In Java | Pro Designs said:s RSS Comments RSS WordPress.org How To Make A Website Multilingual In Java Set up and Management of Multilingual Websites in Sitecore – Attribute Name. Description. name. Name of the website. rootPath. The path to …